Rating: 
Summary: courageous writing
Review: A great read. Very bold, courageous and refreshing. Chapter 16 just blew me away. Brian spoke at my church recently and was equally articulate. Buy it regardless of where you are in your search, Christian or otherwise.
Rating:
Summary: courageous writing
Review: A great read. Very bold, courageous and refreshing. Chapter 16 just blew me away. Brian spoke at my church recently and was equally articulate. Buy it regardless of where you are in your search, Christian or otherwise.
Rating:
Summary: Good for Beginners
Review: An Evangelical friend with whom I participate in an ongoing discussion group- I am a marginal Catholic- recently gave me this book to read with an eye toward future discussion. What follows is a bit of my written response which I am sharing as a personal review for Amazon.com. GOOD FOR BEGINNERS. This is a well-written, intelligent, open-minded, and very user-friendly book. The author is sincere and has provided a welcome aid for spiritual seekers which avoids simplistic moralizing and proselytism. I do think this is a book for those beginning, or considering a beginning in the finding of faith. Much of the discussion relates to a traditional Christian environment of evangelical or fundamentalist born-again spirituality where the Bible, theology, and church are paramount. GOOD FOR SEEKERS. Like me, many may find that the book is not addressed directly to them, although it is found to be useful and encouraging to those on a spiritual journey. But I found the "search" metaphor to be less than useful since I am certain I have already found faith, as much as it can be found. And I continue to find faith in an ongoing journey of transformation, surprise, wonder, and struggle for more authentic awareness. Faith, I suspect, is not something one finds, at least not fully, because it is an ongoing experience, not the abstract claims or propositions offered in conventional religion. OPENNESS WELCOME. What is welcome for me in this author's approach is his openness to a "journey of faith together" and an expectation of "extended conversation." This sense of ongoingness is what adult people of faith will welcome. Too often, I believe, adults are offered evangelistically simplified proclamations which have limited usefulness. These are mere first steps and should not be taken as the "only way to God." First steps too quickly become last steps and lead not to a real spiritual journey but to premature foreclosure on issues requiring a lifetime of inquiry. HONESTY APPRECIATED. McLaren's up-front admission that faith may be "good or bad" increases the likelihood that readers will respond positively to his invitation to "keep walking together." And his acknowledgment that the name "Jesus" can sometimes make him "squirm" (p. 281) reflects an honesty readers will respect. In my 25-plus years of adult spiritual journey I have repeatedly observed that religion, spirituality, or faith is not always a good thing, especially when what is really meant to be a temporary or provisional expression is made into a sectarian absolute. GOOD RELIGION, BAD RELIGION. Again, on page 224, McLaren strikes a note of honesty when he provides some excellent warnings about the potentially cultic aspects of Christianity. When Christianity of any kind turns sectarian or cultic, as I believe it so often does, it stands in the way of the next steps inevitably required if one is to develop an adult faith. And since I would view any particular religion as inherently sectarian (and therefore, "bad faith"), it's almost an imperative that adults must leave it behind at some point, or periodically, if they are to really make headway on the journey. On the other hand, I would not be happy with having religion merely written off as an obsolete human activity either. They can help in the faith development process, and McLaren provides a good discussion of this in chapter three. Religions are useful; they are just not totally adequate to the faith needs of adults in a pluralistic world. We need to take religion seriously, but not too seriously, I think. A SPIRITUALITY OF EXPERIENCE. McLaren seems to make a distinction between faith and spirituality, but I find them largely identical. Experience is what authorizes faith for me. I often put it this way: not an experience, or experiences, but experience. It may be that an experience or experiences are important, but only insofar as they develop our capacity for experience. Although I am sympathetic to his caution that faith "does not bypass intellect," I would say that faith, conceived along the conventional intellectual lines McLaren lays out, must be grounded ultimately not in propositions but in personal experience and spirituality. Faith, or spirituality, is not so much about thinking as it is about reflecting on, listening to personal experience for the word of God found there. I would not presume to equate this "faith" with Christianity or with a universal imperative of some sort. But for me it is good enough. ALL I HAVE IS MY STORY. On page 14, McLaren asks: "To whom do you talk about the search?" I talk, and write with all who care to listen, but not out of a sense of needing help. Yet I do find myself helped, and appreciating the help, when I am listened to or listen to another. It is very easy for me to ignore or demonize those I know I do not agree with, but I find myself useful as a listener and a contributor in the deepening dialogue about spirituality in our contemporary culture. Many in our culture, I believe, will welcome McLaren's insight that adults want to find "an explanation for the spiritual experiences that have come unbidden" into their lives (page 15). This is what so much of my journey has been about: listening to experience and learning from experience how to explain it, how to narrate it, how to make sense of it. Although many spiritual traditions have informed my experience, I do tend to "discern" the sense of my journey in terms of Christianity (catholic sacramentalism). I believe I have an explanation, a story. But not a claim or proposition. My journey is too fluid for anything more than putting it in terms of story. All I really have of authority for me is my story. It's a limited perspective, yet it is good enough, even "salvific." A RELATIONSHIP OF TRANSFORMATION. Though he uses a conventional metaphor for the search, I can agree with McLaren (p. 15) when he says it is a "search for a relationship with a God who really exists." But because it is a relationship of transformation rather than assent to particular doctrines ("finding faith"), it doesn't seem for me to have a clear start or end. And to simply "find" that "God exists" or that a particular religion is "true" as the goal of the search soon becomes an abstraction without ongoing practical consequence. I don't think it's near as important to know in some intellectual sense that God exists as it is to participate in what is known as "theosis" (divinization, ongoing conversion) in the Orthodox tradition. CONVENTIONAL RELIGION. I speak of "conventional" religion, faith or spirituality often. By this I mean what McLaren (p. 16) calls "knowledge or information," even if it is thought to be based on what the bible or the church says is truth. For the individual it must still meet the challenges of critical reason and the authorizing process of authentic experience. In the postmodern context, the Bible is a book, and the church is an organization, each with it's own claims to press. They cannot come to me in some privileged way because others make claims for them. I have to decide, for myself, within my limited perspective, what they have to offer of value. This in no way prohibits me from "acknowledging that we need the Bible" (p.242), but only because we need revelatory experience like that described in the Bible. Reading the Bible, for me at least, and other authentic scriptures, awakens us to the need as well as the capacity for such "revelation." WAKING UP. The "pretty strong wake-up calls" (p.16) are the good news I find in personal experience, critically informed and discerned over time from a variety of religious or non-religious perspectives. I definitely have had many wake-up calls, from an early age, I think. But I would see each individual "call" (life-event found to be revelatory) as part of one great call which continues even now. There is no one wake-up call which takes precedence over the others. And one may wake up in non-religious settings as well. McLaren quotes Wordsworth on page 303 in a way which supports what I am saying here about the call to a spiritual awareness : A presence that disturbs me with the joy
of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man:
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things.
THE HIDDEN WHOLENESS IN ALL THINGS. Following Thomas Merton's lead, I have learned to call this disturbing presence the "hidden wholeness in all things." Again, to use Merton's words, I have developed the "sapiential sensibility," a respect for the mystery, or sacramentality, of reality. Even the born again experience which
Rating:
Summary: Light-years beyond Josh McDowell style apologetics
Review: As a rather progressive postmodern recovering-Evangelical I found this book to be a breath of fresh-air. While this book does fall into the category of apologetics, it is most certainly not an "Evidence That Demands a Verdict" or "Many Infallible Proofs for Christianity" style book. It's entire approach is radically different and immensely relevant to today's postmodern culture. Rather than focusing merely on cognitive arguments that are supposed to rationally convince people of the "absolute" truth of Christian beliefs, "Finding Faith" takes an existential approach that deals with the real life hang ups that postmodern individuals will have about Christianity. In other words, McLaren recognizes that postmoderns don't care so much whether Christianity is true as whether it is good.Of course, postmoderns aren't entirely unconcerned about truth. They're not going to buy into something that is just obviously false. But what is much more important to them is whether our beliefs are livable, workable, and worthwhile. They want to know not "Is Christianity true?" but rather, "Will buying into the Christian faith make me into a better person?" And McLaren is brutally honest about the fact that when most non-Christians look at what Christians are like, what they see tends to repulse them. Too often we Christians present our worst face to the world: our bigotry, our arrogance, our legalism, our lack of cultural and social sensitivity, our tacky art, kitsch merchandise, and bad music, our lack of philosophical depth or intellectual nuance, our sexual or financial scandals, our abortion clinic bombers, our homophobic preachers, our aggressive culture wars and paranoid right-wing conservativism, and worst of all, our lack of visible unity and our inability to even love one another as Christ commanded. To be honest, there are times when I even wonder why I put up with it all and still claim the name "Christian", and I've been a Christian all my life. Can you imagine how someone seeing all this from the outside must perceive us? Can you think of any good reason why a decent, thoughtful, non-Christian person would want to risk taking on all that ugly baggage and even begin exploring Christianity? Well, Brian McLaren recognizes this huge risk that spiritual seekers take when approaching Christianity, and he has aimed "Finding Faith" at providing them with reasons to give Christian faith a second chance. Don't get me wrong, McLaren doesn't skimp on the intellectual side of things either. He has whole chapters analyzing atheism, agnosticism, pluralism, etc. However, even his approach to these is atypical. McLaren doesn't make grandiose promises about logically and conclusively proving his point of view. He recognizes that as finite and fallen creatures it is impossible and absurd to claim absolute certainty about any of our beliefs. Rather he is up front about the short-comings of his arguments, but open about his own reasons for nevertheless maintaining Christian faith despite his lack of airtight proofs. This kind of honest vulnerability is a winning trait of this book, and one that I think would be very appealing to a non-Christian reader. For me the bottom line is that this is one of the very few seeker-oriented Christian books that I wouldn't be embarrassed to give to a non-Christian friend. In fact, I plan to.
Rating:
Summary: (continued review; see part one first, submitted May 1999)
Review: Even the born again experience which was so "big" for me in 1973 is now seen as just one experience of a particular kind. It made me a born again Christian, a Jesus enthusiast for awhile, but I have since come to see that I was on the journey before that, and that I continued on the journey when I left Jesus enthusiasm behind after 1976. Accounting for Something More
In response to McLaren (p. 16) I would say I do feel the "immediacy of something more in life that has never been adequately accounted for," at least for me, because that something more is God (Spirit). If there is an adequate way to account for God, it would need to integrate my personal experience to count as authentic. Knowing, or faith, for me is fairly identical with experience. This does not exclude dialogue with conventional religious "knowledge or information." It just relativizes it, making it take account of informed personal experience. I realize this is a highly personal, individualized way to look at the whole issue of God and faith. This is why I would not presume to universalize my own perspective as God's way. Again, a benefit of the postmodern perspective, at least for me. Letting Go of Religion to Find Faith
On page 17 McLaren writes about "rejecting" faith, but I'm not sure we can really do this. Faith seems to me to be a fundamental human element. We can and do reject religion or leave it behind, especially if it fails to make adult sense of our own lived experiences and that of so many other people of good will inside and outside the religions. When McLaren writes: "we don't have confidence in our faith, and it brings us more pain than comfort," I would lay much of the blame for this deficit at the feet of conventional religion. Too often, it seems to me, personal experience is denigrated or demonized, splitting us against ourselves in favor of orthodox religious information offered up in stale Sunday school or parochial metaphors. In this sense I would extend McLaren's use of the word "nominal" (p. 18) to all religion or faith which does not respect and cultivate personal experience as an authentic source of transforming wisdom. Experience is itself sacramental. Again, one of my frequent ways of stating this is to say that adult religion is not about being right but about becoming wise. I have found that the individual needs to move beyond conventional religion to find the resources for cultivating and accounting for meaningfully personal experience. And urging us to "invigorate the faith we already have," as McLaren does on p. 18, heightens my concern that such efforts lead only to pious artifice and guilt about being less than ideally pious. The Value of the Secular and The Critical Quest
In his discussion of secularism (p. 18) I would respond that it's not faith which seems strange in a secular environment, but religion. Yet I would not be happy to completely close off religion from the authentic search, even if I caution myself and others to be wary of it. I have a positive view of the secular. Unlike McLaren I would not call it "unfulfilling" (p. 18). On the contrary, I wonder if the value of the secular is misunderstood. I find it liberates faith and spirit from the undue dominance of religious tradition. This is why I value pluralism and democracy as aids in the spiritual journey. For me postmodernism is a good thing because it liberates us to recognize the many sources of truth beyond our own perspective. And, in contrast to McLaren's dislike for the Jesus Seminar (p. 282) I welcome it as a necessary effort to reconstruct the historical situation of Jesus and his movement in a way that makes sense to thinking adults. For me the modern critical Jesus quest is a positive endeavor, helping me to understand that the Jesus of history and the Christ of Christianity are not one and the same. Armchair Theology
As a religion, Christianity is about an exclusive way to God, and it may be that Jesus also was similarly exclusive. But belief in God ( faith or spirituality) does not require exclusivity. Nor does a respect for pluralism necessarily imply, as McLaren asserts on page 147, that "all religions are equally true." There's just no way to really know where truth is found without submitting to engagement with the other religions and their representatives. Anything else is just armchair theology. Pluralism allows the kind of dialogue and respect so critical for our global situation. Good Practice
On page 19 McLaren offers a very helpful approach to "questions" and "answers," one of the areas where I think conventional religion has a great deal to learn from spirituality. Yet as important as "good questions" may be, more important for the journey itself beyond a beginning in conventional answers is, I think, good spiritual practice: listening in dialogue, reflection, self-direction, mindfulness, attentiveness and wisdom. The Way
Yes, I consider myself one of the "already convinced" (p.22). Nevertheless, I do appreciate the opportunity to "learn ways to be more understanding of and therefore more helpful to spiritually seeking friends", and those like the author who believe people can and should "search" for God. The search for God, or the journey of transformation, has led me to reflect on the life and teachings of other religious "founders" or exemplars: Krishna, Buddha, Lao Tzu, the bodhisattva, etc. There too, as much as in the life of Jesus, I have found authentic expressions of faith which have deepened my own journey. Again, I would say that all of these teachers are speaking of the way of transformation. They are not necessarily pointing to themselves as the way but to God, or the kingdom, or the spirit, as the way.
Rating:
Summary: (continued review; see part one first, submitted May 1999)
Review: Even the born again experience which was so "big" for me in 1973 is now seen as just one experience of a particular kind. It made me a born again Christian, a Jesus enthusiast for awhile, but I have since come to see that I was on the journey before that, and that I continued on the journey when I left Jesus enthusiasm behind after 1976. Accounting for Something More
In response to McLaren (p. 16) I would say I do feel the "immediacy of something more in life that has never been adequately accounted for," at least for me, because that something more is God (Spirit). If there is an adequate way to account for God, it would need to integrate my personal experience to count as authentic. Knowing, or faith, for me is fairly identical with experience. This does not exclude dialogue with conventional religious "knowledge or information." It just relativizes it, making it take account of informed personal experience. I realize this is a highly personal, individualized way to look at the whole issue of God and faith. This is why I would not presume to universalize my own perspective as God's way. Again, a benefit of the postmodern perspective, at least for me. Letting Go of Religion to Find Faith
On page 17 McLaren writes about "rejecting" faith, but I'm not sure we can really do this. Faith seems to me to be a fundamental human element. We can and do reject religion or leave it behind, especially if it fails to make adult sense of our own lived experiences and that of so many other people of good will inside and outside the religions. When McLaren writes: "we don't have confidence in our faith, and it brings us more pain than comfort," I would lay much of the blame for this deficit at the feet of conventional religion. Too often, it seems to me, personal experience is denigrated or demonized, splitting us against ourselves in favor of orthodox religious information offered up in stale Sunday school or parochial metaphors. In this sense I would extend McLaren's use of the word "nominal" (p. 18) to all religion or faith which does not respect and cultivate personal experience as an authentic source of transforming wisdom. Experience is itself sacramental. Again, one of my frequent ways of stating this is to say that adult religion is not about being right but about becoming wise. I have found that the individual needs to move beyond conventional religion to find the resources for cultivating and accounting for meaningfully personal experience. And urging us to "invigorate the faith we already have," as McLaren does on p. 18, heightens my concern that such efforts lead only to pious artifice and guilt about being less than ideally pious. The Value of the Secular and The Critical Quest
In his discussion of secularism (p. 18) I would respond that it's not faith which seems strange in a secular environment, but religion. Yet I would not be happy to completely close off religion from the authentic search, even if I caution myself and others to be wary of it. I have a positive view of the secular. Unlike McLaren I would not call it "unfulfilling" (p. 18). On the contrary, I wonder if the value of the secular is misunderstood. I find it liberates faith and spirit from the undue dominance of religious tradition. This is why I value pluralism and democracy as aids in the spiritual journey. For me postmodernism is a good thing because it liberates us to recognize the many sources of truth beyond our own perspective. And, in contrast to McLaren's dislike for the Jesus Seminar (p. 282) I welcome it as a necessary effort to reconstruct the historical situation of Jesus and his movement in a way that makes sense to thinking adults. For me the modern critical Jesus quest is a positive endeavor, helping me to understand that the Jesus of history and the Christ of Christianity are not one and the same. Armchair Theology
As a religion, Christianity is about an exclusive way to God, and it may be that Jesus also was similarly exclusive. But belief in God ( faith or spirituality) does not require exclusivity. Nor does a respect for pluralism necessarily imply, as McLaren asserts on page 147, that "all religions are equally true." There's just no way to really know where truth is found without submitting to engagement with the other religions and their representatives. Anything else is just armchair theology. Pluralism allows the kind of dialogue and respect so critical for our global situation. Good Practice
On page 19 McLaren offers a very helpful approach to "questions" and "answers," one of the areas where I think conventional religion has a great deal to learn from spirituality. Yet as important as "good questions" may be, more important for the journey itself beyond a beginning in conventional answers is, I think, good spiritual practice: listening in dialogue, reflection, self-direction, mindfulness, attentiveness and wisdom. The Way
Yes, I consider myself one of the "already convinced" (p.22). Nevertheless, I do appreciate the opportunity to "learn ways to be more understanding of and therefore more helpful to spiritually seeking friends", and those like the author who believe people can and should "search" for God. The search for God, or the journey of transformation, has led me to reflect on the life and teachings of other religious "founders" or exemplars: Krishna, Buddha, Lao Tzu, the bodhisattva, etc. There too, as much as in the life of Jesus, I have found authentic expressions of faith which have deepened my own journey. Again, I would say that all of these teachers are speaking of the way of transformation. They are not necessarily pointing to themselves as the way but to God, or the kingdom, or the spirit, as the way.
Rating: 
Summary: Here's why I wrote "Finding Faith."
Review: Finding Faith Ever since I began my own spiritual questionings and searchings in my teenage years, I have wanted to talk with people about faith. I suppose some of my desire flowed out of empathy, because I always felt there were few people to talk to about my questions, doubts, ideas, etc. There were plenty of people who wanted to tell me what to believe, or who told me directly or indirectly not to ask so many questions ... but there didn't seem to be very many who would listen to my questions and help me work through them at my own pace and in my own way. The people in my life who helped me in this way are among my best friends today. One of the great things they have done for me is recommend good books, books like C. S. Lewis' "Mere Christianity" and his many other works of fiction and nonfiction - or like Scott Peck's "The Road Less Traveled," or more recently, Kathleen Norris' "Amazing Grace." Sometimes they have directed me to music with a spiritual message - from David Wilcox to Bruce Cockburn to Amy Grant. Sometimes we have watched the same movies and dialogued about their meanings for our lives spiritually. Through "Finding Faith," I hope to fill the need in many people's lives for a spiritually sensitive friend who can encourage and help them on their spiritual journey. And I hope this book can join those I just mentioned as a resource for spiritual seekers, wherever they are in the process of finding, losing, or rediscovering a faith that is real. The fact is, though, that the times are changing, and fast. To be living in a postmodern world means to be living in a post-secular world, where spirituality is a topic of intense and increasing importance, but where too few people understand the issues and questions posed by postmodernity. "Finding Faith" is one of a very few books (so far) that attempt to "speak postmodern" and that explore what it means to have faith in these fascinating times. For this reason, I think this book will be of much more enjoyment and help to people who are not already committed believers that to those who feel they already have faith figured out. One fellow, a good friend and a lifelong churchgoer, read the book and said, "Brian, you want my honest feedback? I hated it. In fact I hated it so much that I almost threw it in the trash can. I was so frustrated when I finished the book that I couldn't put it down. I went back to page 1 and read it through again. By the time I finished it the 2nd time, I realized why I hated it, and I saw what you were up to: You weren't using the religious language I was expecting because you weren't writing for religious people like me. And I realized that the people who really need this book would hate it if it had all that religious language that I expected." Another fellow, also a lifelong churchgoer, told me he was attracted to pick up the book by the cover and title. He read the introduction and thought, "This man understands my son." His son dropped out of church years ago, and remains turned off by "organized religion." But he told me that he thought my book would connect with his son, so he bought it and sent it to him in the mail. It's people like this man's son whom I most hope find and read "Finding Faith." As I wrote "Finding Faith," I kept sending manuscripts out to some of my friends who are atheists, agnostics, or otherwise turned off by church, Christianity, etc. They not only gave me a lot of helpful feedback and suggestions, but they also encouraged me by saying that for the first time, they could see why an intelligent person would seek faith and seek for God. I am a pastor of a really unusual Christian church. Over half of the folk who attend are new to church and new to Christianity. Before becoming a pastor, I was a college English instructor. Both in my higher education experience, and in my ministry experience, I have gotten a feeling for how much people need faith, but how hard it is to seek faith, especially when there are so many zealous but sometimes misguided people around who try to push, push, push. That's why I say that "Finding Faith" doesn't try to tell you what to believe, or even just why you should believe. It focuses on the process of "how" to believe, how to develop a "good faith" that will not only connect you with God and other people, but make you a better person in the process. I hope the book is of real help to you!
Rating:
Summary: A Helpful Guide for the New Millennium
Review: Finding Faith is best read by someone who's interested in and maybe even intrigued by the concept of God, but is chary of the way he's been presented by some of those who claim to believe in him the most. McLaren sensitively and intelligently addresses the concerns of those considering if there might somehow be a God who's relevant in any meaningful way to our everyday lives. The author has put together a guide to thinking about faith that leads the reader through a variety of choices without force-feeding stock answers. Particularly helpful is the list of additional resources - varying from Carl Sagan to Walker Percy - at the end of each chapter. With vulnerability about his own journey, a succinct presentation of the various alternatives, and a sensitivity to our postmodern culture, McLaren's Finding Faith could be the first tool used by many seekers in the new millennium as they seek for a genuine and relevant spirituality.
Rating:
Summary: Among the best of it's kind
Review: Finding Faith is rare in that it takes seriously the issues that modern people have with christianity and presents a point of view that isn't tone deaf. McLaren has feeling and sensitivity to issues that educated 21st century people find troubling. These include doubt, sexism and hypocrisy in the church, abhorrent church culture, postmodernism, atheism, intellectual certainty, are handled respectfully and seriously, without the author descending to smug polemic. McClaren actually allows people to disagree with him and form their own opinions. And he's quite open that the christian church sometimes seems very embarassing. Ironically, insiders may find this book even more helpful than it's intended audience. His chapters on the personality types of churches, stages of faith and how God might be experienced should be must reading for those who already believe. McLaren is honest about his own struggles in his journey. These chapters alone could give hope to many older christians if only the church at large was aware that there's more depth to the journey with God than conservative christianity usually presents. Finding Faith is not as highbrow intellectual as some might wish, but that's not it's intention, and will reach a wider audience. It's a good starting point to lead into more heavy-duty works. My only reservation is that Finding Faith occasionally uses christian jargon like "grace" without explanation, and that it's style is sometimes more wordy than needful. But I'm being picky: Until someone writes the perfect "Might belief in God make sense?" book, this is as good as it gets. I'd also recommend "Why Believe?: Reason and Mystery As Pointers to God" by C. Stephen Evans. It's a little more intellectual, but still very readable and user friendly. Like Finding Faith, Evans' book deals with issues like "is Christianity sexist?", "is it just a psychological crutch?", and how the mysteries of life point us to God. It also deals effectively and simply with more classic arguments for and against God. The two books complement each other very well and I recommend both highly.
Rating:
Summary: Among the best of it's kind
Review: Finding Faith is rare in that it takes seriously the issues that modern people have with christianity and presents a point of view that isn't tone deaf. McLaren has feeling and sensitivity to issues that educated 21st century people find troubling. These include doubt, sexism and hypocrisy in the church, abhorrent church culture, postmodernism, atheism, intellectual certainty, are handled respectfully and seriously, without the author descending to smug polemic. McClaren actually allows people to disagree with him and form their own opinions. And he's quite open that the christian church sometimes seems very embarassing. Ironically, insiders may find this book even more helpful than it's intended audience. His chapters on the personality types of churches, stages of faith and how God might be experienced should be must reading for those who already believe. McLaren is honest about his own struggles in his journey. These chapters alone could give hope to many older christians if only the church at large was aware that there's more depth to the journey with God than conservative christianity usually presents. Finding Faith is not as highbrow intellectual as some might wish, but that's not it's intention, and will reach a wider audience. It's a good starting point to lead into more heavy-duty works. My only reservation is that Finding Faith occasionally uses christian jargon like "grace" without explanation, and that it's style is sometimes more wordy than needful. But I'm being picky: Until someone writes the perfect "Might belief in God make sense?" book, this is as good as it gets. I'd also recommend "Why Believe?: Reason and Mystery As Pointers to God" by C. Stephen Evans. It's a little more intellectual, but still very readable and user friendly. Like Finding Faith, Evans' book deals with issues like "is Christianity sexist?", "is it just a psychological crutch?", and how the mysteries of life point us to God. It also deals effectively and simply with more classic arguments for and against God. The two books complement each other very well and I recommend both highly.
|
